The bill amends Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act to add explicit anti-reprisal protections for workers who speak out about workplace violence and harassment and to require hospitals and long-term care homes to publish monthly counts of such incidents on their websites. It replaces subsection 50(1) with a broader list of protected activities and adds a standalone definition of "reprisal" with illustrative examples.
The change creates two connected shifts: it widens legal protection for a long list of disclosure-related activities (including public disclosures and participation in investigations) and it places recurring transparency duties on health-care employers. That combination raises practical compliance questions for employers, creates new data-handling and reputational risks in the health sector, and alters the enforcement calculus for unions, inspectors and legal counsel.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill adds monthly public-reporting requirements for hospitals and long-term care homes, requiring them to post the number of workplace violence and workplace harassment incidents that occurred in the prior month. It also substitutes the Act’s reprisal provision to expressly protect a wide range of worker activities—such as reporting, participating in investigations, refusing unsafe work and speaking to the public—and defines "reprisal" with concrete examples of adverse employment measures.
Who It Affects
Front-line health-care staff, hospital and long-term care administrators, joint health and safety committees, unions and occupational health compliance teams are directly affected. The Ministry of Labour and legal counsel advising employers will face new complaint patterns and enforcement questions.
Why It Matters
Monthly, public incident counts create a new transparency lever that can drive operational and reputational consequences for health employers while the broadened anti-reprisal language reduces the legal risk to workers who disclose violence or harassment. Together, these changes shift where and how employers must collect, publish and defend data and conduct investigations.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The bill does two distinct things to the Occupational Health and Safety Act. First, it requires employers that are hospitals and employers that are long-term care homes to publish, at least once a month on their websites, the number of workplace violence incidents and the number of workplace harassment incidents that occurred during the immediately preceding month.
The reporting obligation is narrowly framed as a numerical count and is tied to the previous month; the bill does not mandate breakdowns, narrative explanations, or anonymized case details.
Second, the bill replaces the existing anti-reprisal subsection with a broader list of protected activities and a new clarifying subsection that defines what counts as a "reprisal." The new protected-activity list explicitly covers routine OHSA activities (seeking enforcement, assisting joint health and safety committees, refusing unsafe work) and adds public-facing actions: giving information to the public, making a public disclosure, and participating in violence or harassment investigations. The protection applies when the worker acts "in good faith."The definition of "reprisal" is expanded and illustrated: it is any measure that adversely affects employment and expressly includes termination, demotion, discipline, layoffs, transfers, elimination of a job, change of work location, reductions in pay or hours, and intimidation or coercion.
By enumerating these examples the bill reduces ambiguity about what workplace actions can trigger a reprisal claim, although it does not alter existing enforcement procedures or provide a separate penalty scheme in the text.Practically, employers in the affected health sectors will need systems to count and publish incident numbers each month, and to review internal discipline and assignment practices to ensure they do not constitute prohibited reprisals. Unions and health and safety reps gain clearer statutory cover for a wide range of disclosure and investigatory activities, while privacy officers and communications teams will confront trade-offs between transparency and confidentiality when incident counts are posted publicly.
The bill comes into force on royal assent and takes effect immediately, so employers and worker representatives will need to assess operations and reporting workflows promptly.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The bill requires hospitals and long-term care homes to post, at least once per month on their websites, the number of workplace violence incidents and the number of workplace harassment incidents that occurred in the immediately preceding month.
It replaces subsection 50(1) of the Occupational Health and Safety Act with a new list of protected activities that explicitly covers making public disclosures and providing information to the public about workplace violence, harassment or other contraventions.
The statute adds a new subsection defining "reprisal" as any measure that adversely affects a worker’s employment and lists examples including termination, demotion, layoff, transfer, elimination of a job, change of job location, reduction in wages or hours, and intimidation or coercion.
Protected activities under the new text include seeking enforcement, assisting or participating in joint health and safety committee activities, refusing unsafe work, participating in investigations, and testifying in enforcement proceedings or inquests.
The Act comes into force on the day it receives Royal Assent, so the reporting and expanded protections are effective immediately upon proclamation.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Monthly public reporting of workplace violence for hospitals
This amendment adds a new subsection requiring employers that are hospitals to publish, at least once a month on their websites, the number of workplace violence incidents in the immediately preceding month. The requirement is strictly numerical and retrospective; the provision does not require context, categorization, or de-identified narratives. Administratively, hospitals must implement a reliable counting process and a website posting routine to comply with the cadence.
Monthly public reporting of workplace harassment for long-term care homes
Mirroring the hospital amendment, this change obliges long-term care homes to publish monthly counts of workplace harassment incidents on their websites. Because the bill separates violence and harassment reporting into different statutory subsections, operators should expect parallel but distinct counting systems and consider harmonizing internal definitions to avoid inconsistent public numbers between the two venues.
Expanded anti-reprisal protections and a defined list of reprisals
The bill replaces the existing anti-reprisal subsection with an expanded catalogue of protected activities, adding explicit protection for public disclosures and other speech about workplace violence and harassment. It further adds subsection (1.1) which defines a reprisal as any employer measure that adversely affects employment and supplies concrete examples (termination, demotion, layoffs, transfers, wage or schedule changes, intimidation). This two-part change narrows enforcement ambiguity by both enlarging protected conduct and clarifying what employer actions qualify as reprisals, but it does not itself change the enforcement process or remedies elsewhere in the Act.
Immediate commencement on Royal Assent
The bill stipulates that it comes into force on the day it receives Royal Assent. There is no delayed or phased implementation period, which means employers and worker representatives must adjust operational practices and reporting systems promptly after enactment.
Short title: Speaking Out About, and Reporting On, Workplace Violence and Harassment Act, 2025
A housekeeping provision setting the Act’s short title. Practically, the title signals legislative intent to pair protections for disclosures with public reporting obligations—useful shorthand for compliance teams, communications staff and legal counsel when framing new policies and external statements.
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Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Front-line health-care workers: The broadened list of protected activities and clearer examples of reprisals reduce legal ambiguity and make it harder for employers to discipline or reassign workers for reporting violence or harassment.
- Joint health and safety committees and health and safety representatives: Explicit statutory protection for assisting committees and participating in investigations strengthens committee influence and reduces fear of retaliation for committee members.
- Unions and employee advocates: Expanded protections for speech, complaints and public disclosures give unions more leverage to represent members and to escalate systemic issues without as much risk of employer reprisals.
- Patients, families and the public: Monthly published counts increase transparency about the frequency of violence and harassment incidents in hospitals and long-term care homes, informing choices and pressure for operational change.
Who Bears the Cost
- Hospitals and long-term care employers: They must build or modify incident-tracking systems, invest staff time to validate monthly counts, manage website postings, and absorb reputational risks from public data exposure.
- Small or rural health-care facilities: Limited administrative capacity makes monthly data aggregation and public posting a proportionally heavier burden compared with larger institutions that have in-house compliance teams.
- Employer legal and HR teams: Broader anti-reprisal language increases potential for grievances, complaints and litigation, driving demand for legal advice, investigations and possible defence costs.
- Privacy and communications officers: Posting incident numbers creates a new public-information duty that must be balanced against privacy obligations (including PHIPA) and communications strategies, increasing workload and coordination demands.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is balancing stronger worker protections and public transparency against privacy, administrative burdens and reputational impacts: enabling workers to speak and requiring public incident counts advances accountability, but it also forces employers—many with limited resources—to collect and publish sensitive data and defend against potentially damaging public disclosures, a trade-off with no neat technical fix.
The bill’s public-reporting requirement is concise—limited to monthly numerical counts—and that simplicity generates both practical and interpretive challenges. Numbers without context can mislead stakeholders: a month with a high count could reflect improved reporting rather than deteriorating safety, while low counts could indicate under-reporting or record-keeping failures.
Because the bill does not require disaggregation by type, location, or workforce group, regulators or the public may press for additional guidance or voluntary disclosure standards to make the figures meaningful.
The expansion of protected activities and the new definition of "reprisal" reduce fuzziness but leave important questions unresolved. The threshold "in good faith" remains open to factual dispute and will be litigated in cases where employers claim complaints were malicious or vexatious.
The bill also expressly protects public disclosures, which promotes transparency but increases the risk of reputational harm to employers based on unverified assertions; employers may respond by tightening internal discipline and surveillance, creating tension with the protective intent. Finally, the Act does not create new enforcement mechanisms or dedicated funding for the Ministry of Labour to audit reporting or investigate reprisals more proactively, so practical enforcement will depend on existing complaint-driven pathways and available inspection resources.
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